8 110. ETHICS OF THE EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSY. 663
But it would be great injustice to attribute his conduct to obstinacy and pride, or any selfish motive. It proceeded from his inmost conviction. He regarded the real presence as a fundamental article of faith, inseparably connected with the incarnation, the union of the two natures of Christ, and the mystical union of believers with his divine-human personality. He feared that the denial of this article would consistently lead to the rejection of all mysteries, and of Christianity itself. He deemed it, moreover, most dangerous and horrible to depart from what had been the consensus of the Christian Church for so many centuries. His piety was deeply rooted in the historic Catholic faith, and it cost him a great struggle to break loose from popery. In the progress of the eucharistic controversy, all his Catholic instincts and abhorrence of heresy were aroused and intensified. In his zeal he could not do justice to his opponents, or appreciate their position. His sentiments are shared by millions of pious and devout Lutherans to this day, whose conscience forbids them to commune with Christians of Reformed churches. We may lament their narrowness, but must re-
Freundlein’’), who would have known nothing of Christ and the gospel if Luther had not previously written (‘‘wo der Luther nicht zuvor hitte geschrieben’’). He compared Carlstadt to Absalom and to Judas the traitor. He treated the Swiss not much better, in a letter to his blind admirer Amsdorf, April 14, 1545 (De Wette,’V. 728), where he says that they kept silence, while he alone was sustaining the fury of popery (cum solus sudarem in sustinenda furia Pape), and that after the peril was over, they claimed the victory, and reaped the fruit of his labors (tum erampebant triumphatores gloriosi. Sic, sic alius laborat, alius fruitur). Dr. Dollinger (Luther, 1851, p. 29 sq.) derives the bitterness of Luther’s polemics against the Swiss largely from ‘‘ jealousy and wounded pride,”’ and calls his refutation of their arguments ‘‘ very weak,’’ and even ‘‘dishonest”’ (‘‘ seine Polemik war, wie immer und gegen jedermann, in hohem Grade unehrlich,” p. 31). Thecharge of dishonesty we cannot admit.
1 The philosopher Steffens, who was far from uncharitable bigotry, always went from Berlin to Breslau to commune with the orthodox Old Lutherans. Bishop Martensen, one of the profoundest Lutheran divines of the nineteenth century, thought that only in cases of necessity could a Lutheran commune with a Calvinist, who denies what Luther affirms, or evades the mystery of the real presence, Briefwechsel zwischen Martensen und Dorner,
664 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1530.
spect their conviction, as we do the conviction of the far larger number of Roman Catholics, who devoutly believe in the miracle of transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the mass.
In addition to Luther’s dogmatic standpoint we must take into account his ignorance of the true character of the Swiss, and their real doctrine. He had hardly heard of the Swiss Reformation when the controversy began. He did not even spell Zwingli’s name correctly (he always calls him “Zwingel”), and could not easily understand his Swiss dialect.1. He made a radical mistake by confounding him with Carlstadt and the fanatics. He charged him with reducing the Lord’s Supper to a common meal, and bread and wine to empty signs; and, although he found out his mistake at Marburg, he returned to it again in his last book, adding the additional charge of hypocrisy or apostasy. He treated him as a heathen, yea, worse than a heathen, as he treated Erasmus.
Zwingli was clear-headed, self-possessed, jejune, and sober (even in his radical departures from Rome), and farther removed from fanaticism than Luther himself. He was a pupil of the classical and humanistic school of Erasmus; he had never been so deeply rooted in the medieval faith, and it cost him much less trouble than Luther to break off from the old church; he was a man of reflection rather than of intuition, and had no mystic vein, but we may say a rationalistic bent. Nevertheless, he was as loyal to Christ, and believed in the Word of God and the supernatural as firmly, Berlin, 1888, vol. I. 262 sq. He changed his view afterwards. I could name eminent living Lutheran divines who would hardly allow even this exception. In America the Lutheran theory had largely given way to the Zwinglian until it was revived by the German Missouri Synod, and found a learned advocate in Dr. Krauth, who went so far as to propose to the General Lutheran Council the so-called ‘‘Galesburg rule’’ (1875): ‘‘Lutheran pulpits for Lutheran ministers only, Lutheran altars for Lutheran communicants only.”
1 Zwingli’s Latin is better than his Ziiridiitsch, in which his answers to Luther’s German attacks were written.